Efforts for Promoting Open Access Repositories in Palestine

Developing countries have begun to take strong steps in open access publishing through open repositories, however, they face significant challenges that may differ from those in developed countries, most notably the lack of resources at the institutional level, as well as the political and geographic constraints that reduce the incentive for open repositories adoption. Developing countries also have special needs at the user level, specifically with regard to the language used in open repository systems. The existence of solutions at the national or perhaps regional level will contribute to encouraging institutions in these countries to adopt open repositories, especially if these solutions come to remove most of the burden on institutions to develop, customize, and maintain these open repositories. In this presentation, we will introduce ROMOR, a project funded by the Erasmus+ program, as one of the initiatives for building open institutional repositories in Palestine. We will discuss with the conference participants ROMOR's future vision for a national solution to support open access publishing.